This group works largely “in the hospitality industry, in construction and in places with agriculture,” Audrey Singer of the Brookings Institution says. “But people would be surprised at the variation that is behind those numbers.”

So what happens if and when many of them get permits to work legally? The Migration Policy Institute figures a change could affect upwards of 3.7 million people, freeing them to chase better jobs.

(Courtesy of: Migration Policy Institute)

“As people get legal status they are going to be more mobile,” the institute’s deputy director, Marc Rosenblum, says. “There are some unauthorized immigrants who are unable to change jobs, because they don’t have proof of work eligibility. It’s difficult to quit a job and look for another one.”

Legal working papers can also give workers confidence to bargain for higher wages, Rosenbaum says.

In a study of people who got new green cards, the only people who moved up the wage ladder had high-skills. Less than one in five do, says Laura Hill of the Public Policy Institute of California.

“It was really the high skilled workers who were able to translate this new status into better paying jobs,” institute senior fellow Laura Hill says. “The lower skilled unauthorized workers, which are the majority, were not able to make the transition.”

If that’s an indication, only those with good skills and English may be emboldened by work papers. And any change may be temporary. It would come via executive order, which means the next president could move in and press the “undo” button.

After a three-year tuition freeze, the UC Board of Regents approved a plan today that would raise prices by as much as 5 percent a year for the next 5 years, unless the state comes up with more funding. That would ultimately push tuition well past $15,000 a year.

The reason? UC President Janet Napolitano says state funding hasn’t kept up with rising costs.

Ten years ago, the state covered about 60 percent of a UC student’s tuition, according to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Families were on the hook for about 40 percent. Now, it’s the other way around.

She says there’s good reason for taxpayers to invest more in higher education.

“College-educated Californians earn more money, pay more taxes and use less of the social service costs that the state has to spend,” she says.

After years of steep cuts, the state has increased funding for higher education in the last few years. According to the university, the increases are not enough to keep up with growing demand for a college education in the state. Napolitano says the increases will allow the university to admit 5,000 more California students.

After a three-year tuition freeze, the UC Board of Regents approved a plan today that would raise prices by as much as 5 percent a year for the next 5 years, unless the state comes up with more funding. That would ultimately push tuition well past $15,000 a year.

The reason? UC President Janet Napolitano says state funding hasn’t kept up with rising costs.

Ten years ago, the state covered about 60 percent of a UC student’s tuition, according to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Families were on the hook for about 40 percent. Now, it’s the other way around.

She says there’s good reason for taxpayers to invest more in higher education.

“College-educated Californians earn more money, pay more taxes and use less of the social service costs that the state has to spend,” she says.

After years of steep cuts, the state has increased funding for higher education in the last few years. According to the university, the increases are not enough to keep up with growing demand for a college education in the state. Napolitano says the increases will allow the university to admit 5,000 more California students.

The latest figures from the Canadian networking company Sandvine show Netflix accounts for 35 percent of all the bandwidth usage during peak periods in North America.

As Quartz points out, there are a few caveats to the data. For one, "peak periods" means mostly at night when we're home watching stuff. Also, the report doesn't account for internet usage on cell phones.

Netflix's closest competitor is YouTube, which accounts for about 14 percent of the bandwidth. Not to mention it clobbers other video streaming services like Amazon Video (2.58 percent) and Hulu (1.41 percent).

School lunchrooms are sometimes referred to as "the biggest restaurant chain in America," and in districts across California a new program is trying to get local ingredients on the menu. It's part of a big push in the state to promote healthy eating and local agriculture – and to bring the fresh high-end cuisine that California is known for into the cafeteria.

Two questions: How will districts pay for it? And will California kids eat it?

California public schools serve 560 million lunches a year. In a state that also grows a lot of this country’s food, it makes sense that young Californians would eat California-grown meals.

That’s the idea behind a new school lunch plan called California Thursdays that debuted last week. Fifteen districts across the state have partnered with the program, including such big ones as Los Angeles and San Diego. Yet the large-scale change is starting small.

“What we like to call a bite-sized implementation strategy,” says Zenobia Barlow, co-founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy. For the past 20 years, her organization has been promoting sustainable living through schools. Because school lunch is such a big enterprise, Barlow says it could change the way we eat outside the cafeteria, too.

“By institutional purchasing, we’re going to trigger demand that will result in greater production of sustainably grown and sustainably produced food,” Barlow says. “Just from a business perspective, when kids start eating fresh and freshly prepared delicious meals, there are economies of scale that make it possible.”

But school lunch is bound by federal requirements and a strict budget.

Alexandra Emmott, Oakland Unified School District's “farm-to-school supervisor," figures that “for an entree, which needs to be a serving of protein and a serving of grain, we have a budget of 60 cents per entree.”

For the fruit or vegetable, its 20 cents, she says, and 25 cents for the milk.

A California Thursdays dish can cost more. The district pays 40 cents for a locally sourced and antibiotic-free chicken leg, Emmott says. High-schoolers need two drumsticks to meet USDA protein requirements, which puts the entree over budget.

Sometimes the district balances the extra cost over the course of the lunch calendar, or hits the price point by replacing a second piece of chicken with, say, red beans and rice. It involves some creativity, but Emmott says this type of thinking is starting to catch on.

“I talked to folks in Maine who were sourcing local proteins up there, even fish. So there are districts all across the country who are starting to do this," she says.

Just last month, Minnesota Thursdays launched its own local lunch program for students in the Twin Cities. Back in Oakland, 17-year-old Ayana Edgerly says “the food is way better in the cafeteria on Thursdays.”

Over the summer, she worked with the Center for Ecoliteracy to conduct peer taste-tests on California Thursdays recipes. Students were given a dish, then asked to rate it from one to five in terms of taste and appearance, Edgerly says. They also were asked: "Would you get in a lunch line for it?"

Me personally? I haven’t eaten a school lunch since fourth grade, but my colleagues at Youth Radio offered to prepare one of the new dishes.

They whipped up a bowl of shredded chicken and broccoli over brown rice. It looked kind of cute and even tasted pretty good, like a home-cooked meal but served at school.

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